Embers
by Metarie
Summary: The war came, and the Federation lost. Earth invaded, the fleet destroyed, a new Empire in power. The embers of the Federation are scarred and scattered, but some of them refuse to break...
1. That Was Not the End

_**Disclaimer: Just playing in the sandbox.**_

_**A/N: AU to everything that will probably happen post-movie. This could get epically long, FYI. Highly influenced by my Babylon 5 rewatch. Hope you enjoy. :)**_

* * *

Gaila sleeps alone, now, every night. The whole bed to herself, no one to fight over the blankets with. It's comforting to know that all the warm spots on the sheets come from her.

She spends her days relaxing. Quaint, domestic things she never thought she'd enjoy. Reading on the porch, watching wild pygmies play in the trees along the side of her cottage. Working in her garden, feeling the dirt and grime soak into her palms and get underneath her fingernails. It reminds her of the _Enterprise_.

She doesn't get many visitors on Rochari III. It's one of the reasons she decided to settle here. It's mild, safe, out of the way... not enough inhabitants to attract the attention of the New Empire, and it isn't like they know she's still alive anyway. As far as they know, the entire crew of the _Enterprise _went down with the ship. And really, it's not too far from the truth.

Occasionally, though, she hosts visits from travelers. In her mind she thinks _travelers_- but really, they're refugees. Just like she used to be. Or still is, when she thinks about it too much. Something she tries not to do. They never stay longer than a night, and sometimes they only stay a few minutes - just passing through, on the way to the nearest port, about twenty kilometers from her home. Sometimes they recognize her, but mostly they just want directions. It's fine with her.

Gaila is always cheerful, always courteous, always detached. She never wastes time bonding with them - they're on the run, on the edge of safety, and it doesn't matter who any of them were, before the war. Now they're just people who lost, and all they want is for the pain to stop. She helps them because they're usually Starfleet officers. _Former,_ she has to remind herself. Former Starfleet officers.

Can't be an officer in a club that no longer exists.

The only news from outside that Gaila ever hears come from these people passing through, and it's more than enough. More, really, than she wanted to know. If she had her way, she would be perfectly content to live here, alone, in solitude, and pretend none of it had happened, that she hadn't been a part of something magnificent and beautiful and then lost it all in a war she didn't even understand.

The worst part is when they tell her about them. "We heard Hikaru Sulu commandeered a Farian cargo ship and is running supplies in and out of Earth." "Don't believe the rumors - Kirk is alive. They lied when they announced they had him executed." "All the old _Enterprise _crew is meeting up, trying to rally a resistance force. They're going to strike back."

"They're gonna take back Earth from the New Empire!" says a runaway named Mandy, a former yeoman on the _Agamemnon_, around bites of pygmy stew. "I'm gonna find them and join up."

"Good for you," says Gaila, because who is she to dash her hopes like that? It isn't true. None of it is. It can't be.

_I would know, _she thinks, as she sends Mandy on her way with a wave. _Someone would have told me. Someone would've come to get me._ And that someone is dead.

Gaila is glad she sleeps alone, because the fires of the _Enterprise's _last battle torment her dreamscape. The insides of her eyelids burn with the image of seeing Scotty above her as he carried her, covered in burns, to an escape pod and then leaving her there to go back for the others. He said he would be right back - but he wasn't right back. They left without him. She always wakes in a cold sweat, breathing hard, tears on her face.

She only cries when she's asleep.

* * *

When it rains, it pours a slow, steady drizzle, tapping a soothing melody on the windows. There's thunder, quiet and distant, and Gaila finds the sound peaceful.

She gets up, dresses herself in her work clothes - the same thing she wore yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that... she decides to do some cleaning, a little tidying up, just so it looks nice. She likes it when it looks nice.

After a while she thinks she hears someone knock on the door, but she's scrubbing out the bathtub in the bathroom on the other side of the house so she's not sure if it was really a knock or just the rain. But then she hears it again, so she removes her rubber gloves and goes to answer it.

Gaila opens the door and finds she is totally unprepared for what stands before her. Her mind immediately goes completely blank, empty, and she has to remind herself to keep breathing or else she might pass out. What stands before her seems to have a similar reaction, because he just stares at her, like he's trying to get himself to trust his own eyes.

She stares back, frozen, gripping the door so tightly her knuckles go white.

"Scotty?" she ventures, finally, after an eternity of moments, in a tiny little voice, barely audible and cracking, and it's a question because yes, she sees him, yes, he's here, but -

"Gaila," he says, and when she collapses it's forward and into his arms.

"I thought I'd - oh my god, I thought I'd never see you again," he says into her hair, almost laughing with relief.

"I thought you were _dead_." She pulls back to look at him, puts her hands on either side of his face.

"No," he says, and his voice is cracking too. "No, I got beamed out - at the very last bloody second - a miracle, if I do say so myself, though it wasn't my doing - ow! What?"

Gaila just punched him in the face - there wasn't much connect between her brain and her hand. Everything went on before she had time to think about stopping it. Just, one second she was standing there, and the next she had pulled back and socked him a good one. Then she's yelling. "Why didn't you come find me sooner?! I mean for fuck's sake, Scotty! I thought you were dead! I saw our ship explode with you on it! Goddammit, at least you knew there was a _chance _I had survived and gotten away! It's been _six years! _Six whole... and you were alive all that time, and I've been here, alone..." she trails off. "Your lip is bleeding."

"Well, someone just punched me in the face, didn't they?"

Gaila wipes the stray tears off her cheeks and puts her hands on her hips. "Come on," she says, and she turns and leads him inside.

Scotty sits down at the kitchen table as Gaila runs some cold water over a cloth. She sits on the table in front of him and starts to dab at his lip.

He sucks in a breath at the cold contact, wincing. "Ow, ow..."

"Oh, don't be such a baby, it's not that bad," she says, but she's more gentle anyway.

"This is a nice little place you've got," Scotty says, after a moment.

"It's all right."

"No, really," Scotty says. "It's very... it's good. It suits you."

Gaila laughs a little. "No it doesn't. It's a house." She refuses to meet his eyes.

He reaches up and catches her hand in his. "Gaila. _Gaila," _he says, imploringly. "On my life, there wasn't a day that went by where I wasn't looking for you."

Tears well up in her eyes again. She presses them shut, trying to hold it in.

"I went all over," Scotty says. "A research vessel on the run came out of warp just as you were escaping and they rescued me. Once they found a safe place to put to port I started looking... it took ages, you know what it's like now... and humans are practically second class citizens now that the New Empire took over our planet. I feared the worst, I thought maybe you'd been kidnapped, sold out into slavery or... I don't know, I even wondered if your pod hadn't made it, but then I found Lieutenant Roberts, the pilot of your shuttle..." Scotty shakes his head. "He said they'd taken you to a hospital and left you there, so I went to that hospital to look for you but they said you'd checked out a month previous..." He squeezes her hand. "I spent the next six years looking for you, Gaila. I never stopped. Not once."

Gaila finally looks at him. "Okay," she says, her voice shaky. "I believe you."

"I'm sorry it took so long..."

"I'm sorry I hit you," says Gaila, laughing weakly. "It's just, I missed you so much..."

Scotty's chair topples over in his hurry to reach her, to cover her lips with his. She responds hungrily, wondering vaguely if she should be careful of the still swollen cut on his bottom lip but his enthusiastic desperation for her erases that from her mind.

She pulls him down on top of her, falling clumsily back on the table as his hands roam over her clothing, and everything feels like it was before, like they hadn't spent even a second apart from one another. Gaila closes her eyes and relishes it. But then his hands finally slide under her shirt and over the hot bare scars on her stomach, and he stops.

These scars are the remnants of the fires in Engineering, the injury that kept her fading in and out of consciousness as he carried her to the escape pod. Scotty pulls her shirt back, slowly, reverently, and runs his fingers lightly, gently over her skin. "Oh, Gaila," he says, quietly.

"There're more where those came from," she jokes, but she's fighting back more tears - _too many tears _- at the look on his face. There are, though - the scars go around her left side and across most of her back. It's lovely, it really is. She isn't ashamed of them, not anymore. But she doesn't exactly parade them before the world. She's never let anyone see them.

Scotty is at a loss. He picks his chair up and sits down, his shaking hands covering his face. "I am so sorry," he says. "I'm so sorry."

"Scotty, stop it." She pulls his hands away from his face, and now there are tears in his eyes. "I'm alive. Thanks to you, I'm alive. If these scars are the price for that..."

"I should've stayed in the escape pod with you," he says, vehemently. "I should never have left you. Not when you were so hurt. I've berated myself for not doing that ever since I did it. I should have stayed."

"It doesn't matter," Gaila says. "We're both alive. We're both here, together, now. Nothing else matters anymore." It's true. Now that she's said it aloud, it's the truest thing in her whole entire life. And when he looks up at her, she knows he knows it too.

"Come on," she says, and she takes his hand and pulls him to her bedroom.

* * *

_**Let me know what you think!**_


	2. Frozen Like a Soldier

_**Disclaimer: Characters are not mine, I'm just obsessed with them all.**_

_**A/N: AU to everything that will probably happen post-movie.**_

_**

* * *

**_

"Lieutenant Adams left this morning on a transport headed for the outer Andorian territories, continuing her mission to generate support for our cause... no word yet from New Vulcan but as far as anyone we've talked to knows, their neutrality has been maintained, if somewhat precariously... good news for us there, since we do have many sympathizers among that population, according to the most recent report sent from Mr. Spock..." Janice trails off. "Jim, are you listening?"

Jim Kirk blinks, coming out of his reverie. "Yes. Sorry. Anything from Sulu and Bones?"

"No," says Janice, scanning through the reports on her PADD. "But they're due in here any day now, so you'll be able to debrief them once they arrive. Ensign Slater will be with them as well."

"Right. Good. What about our people on Tellar Prime?"

Janice shakes her head. "Not a peep. But there isn't a whole lot of communication in or out of there these days. They're still... very heavily occupied."

Jim drums his fingers on the table, sighing. "So more of the same on pretty much every front?"

"Pretty much." Janice sets her old and worn out PADD down on the kitchen table.

Jim picks up a spoonful of oatmeal and lets it fall back into his bowl. "What about on the breakfast front?"

Janice smirks at him. "It's that or emergency rations, and we all know how you feel about those." She gets up and takes her empty bowl into the kitchen, rinsing it out in the sink.

"Doesn't mean this is better," Jim grumbles, but he finishes it anyway.

They don't have a lot. Athos IV is a difficult place to live, even in good times. It's foggy and cold all the time, and gardens are nearly impossible to cultivate, though some in their meager settlement have yet to give up trying. They depend completely upon stolen goods brought to them from other members of the resistance, and it has been a while since their last shipment. Janice hopes that Sulu hurries - she may have rounded up the estimates for his arrival, for her Jim's benefit. Because it won't just be much needed rations and supplies coming with him - it'll be news from outside. Communications are sketchy because of the heavy atmosphere, and the fact that they're so far away from everything isn't exactly helpful, either.

Janice is washing off the few dishes in the sink using the sonic faucet when Jim puts his bowl in with the rest, wrapping his arms around her to do so. She leans back into him, comforted.

"How are you today, Mrs. Kirk?"

"You know, I never officially changed my name," she says, turning her head so he can kiss her neck. "And I don't know if I'm ever going to."

"Whatever," he says. "As long as I get to call you that."

"Only in the house," she says.

"Mommy?" The little voice is much closer than Janice expected, and when she looks down she sees her four year old blue eyed daughter staring up at her, rumpled blonde hair sticking up in every which way.

"Good morning sweetie pie," she says, smiling down at her as she disentangles herself from Jim's embrace. "I thought you were still asleep. You hungry, Sophie?"

Sophie nods, as Jim scoops her up. "Pancakes!" she says.

"Pancakes?" says Janice, as she starts preparing another bowl of oatmeal. "Those do sound good, don't they?"

"Sure do," says Jim. "Pancakes it is!"

Sophie claps her hands happily. "No more slimy stuff!"

"Down with the slimy stuff," Jim agrees, as he sets her down in a chair at the table. He sits down next to her. "Soph, I gotta tell you something."

The four year old assumes a very serious posture. "Okay, Daddy."

"We are totally and _completely _out of syrup."

Sophie slaps a hand to her forehead. "Oh no!"

"I know, it's very serious problem," says Jim. "We don't have any pancakes, either."

_"Oh no!"_

"All we have... is the slimy stuff."

Sophie makes a face.

"Yeah, that's how I feel about it too," says Jim, shaking his head. "But it's very important that we eat it."

"But _why,_" whines Sophie.

"Because, that way, when we DO have pancakes again, they will taste _that much better."_

Sophie looks very skeptical of this idea. "Really?"

"Yes. Really. I promise. And you know, some people in some places don't have any food at _all_ right now."

Her eyebrows furrow in concern. "Oh," she says.

"So we can't take our oatmeal for granted. Even if it is nasty and slimy and we have to eat it three meals a day."

"It's not that nasty _or _slimy," says Janice, as she puts the bowl in front of Sophie. "_I_ like it."

"See, there," says Jim, slapping his hand on the table. "It can't be that bad, if Mommy likes it."

"But I don't _like _it," says Sophie, crossing her arms over her chest. "It's mushy. Like baby food."

Jim and Janice exchange glances, both holding back a smile.

"It can't be baby food," says Janice, crouching down next to Sophie. "Mommy and Daddy both eat it, and we're not babies."

_"I'm_ not a baby either," says Sophie.

"That's right," says Jim. "You're my big strong girl. Now eat up. You want me to feed you?"

_"No,_ Daddy!" she shrieks, laughing at such a ridiculous proposition. "I can do it _myself!"_

"Okay, okay," he says, holding his hands up in surrender. "I was just checking."

Janice goes back to her dish washing, as she watches her daughter and her husband at the table. Mornings like this are rare. Sometimes Jim is out on scouting missions, or sometimes Janice is. Sometimes there's an emergency transport landing. Once they had to hide for three days in the storm shelter not because of a hurricane but because of the New Empire patrol ships that were passing by.

So normality like this is a gift. These are the kinds of mornings Janice dreamed of having when she first found out she was pregnant, before the war was over and they had lost. _Kind of nice,_ she thinks, feeling, not for the first time, wistful and angry about the events that led her here, to this planet, to this hovel of a house where they eat oatmeal every day for every meal. She's sad she doesn't get to raise this little bundle of energy on a ship she'd have loved exploring. She's sad that there isn't an Aunt Gaila or an Aunt Christine around to teach Sophie inappropriate things to scandalize her parents. She's angry that she feels helpless here on this abandoned old colony to do anything about anything.

Because all they can do is wait. Wait for news, wait for supplies, wait for people to decide it's worth their time to help them take back their planets, their homes. Sometimes Janice can hardly stand it, and neither can Jim, and neither can anyone living here, because they've all dedicated themselves to the cause. And right now, the cause needs them to wait.

But it won't always be about waiting. One day - and hopefully one day soon - it'll be about vengeance.

* * *

**_Let me know what you think!_**


	3. Taste of a Neverending Ache

_**Disclaimer: Characters are so very much not mine.**_

_**A/N: I didn't forget about this story, guys! I've just been busy graduating from college and moving home and looking high and low for a job that isn't retail. But here we are: an update. Hope you enjoy and let know what you think will happen – I love feedback! Knowing you guys are reading gives me a reason to write. :) **_

* * *

_She's tied to a chair, her face nearly unrecognizable from all the beatings. Lip split and bleeding down her chin, she stares up at her interrogator, unblinking, unwavering, and she laughs -_

"McCoy, we're about to come up to the blockade."

Dr. Leonard McCoy wakes up, startled, and it's because Sulu is banging on the door. He's disoriented and a little groggy.

"You awake, Len?" Sulu opens the door and pokes his head in.

"I am now," says McCoy, grumpily.

"You wanted me to wake you up."

"I know, I know. I'll be there in a second."

Sulu shuts the door when he leaves, and McCoy falls back on his bunk, wiping sweat off his forehead. Damned cargo ship, the bed felt like concrete. He always woke up with bruises, though he's sure some of those were from flailing about in his sleep. Nightmares like the one Sulu had just interrupted were a nightly occurrence.

Not that he knows if it's night or day anymore - difficult to judge a thing like that, out in space. One of the many reasons he hates it so much.

Another reason: it separates people. A third: it's way too easy to die in it.

McCoy dresses himself, putting the images of Christine being tortured out of his mind. He convinces himself, as he does every morning, that her imprisonment is not like that, that it's more humane, that she's asked politely for information instead of having Klingon guards try to beat it out of her.

And then he tells himself for the hundred millionth time that he should never have let her go back.

* * *

By this time, Christine has realized and accepted the fact that she's gone crazy. There's no other way to explain the way she keeps escaping into imaginary non-existent worlds that last for hours or days in her mind, but only mere seconds between beatings.

Because of course her situation is the worst it could possibly be. She's not sure what she expected. Her planet is overrun with Klingons and Romulans, and they exterminate any humans they find like vermin - the only reason she's alive is the fact that she knows things. She knows Kirk, and Sulu, and Spock, and Le - but she doesn't say his name, not even in her head, not even during the dreams.

But she knows where they all are, and that's what they want.

It's longer between torture sessions these days, and it's worse that way. At least in the beginning, she grew numb to it after a while. The same wounds, opened again and again. It started to get old. Now they let her heal before they come at her again. They let her go stir crazy from the isolation. She even misses them, sometimes. She knows their names - Korox and Koloth are quite the double team, but she's downright fond of Grilka.

Now they only show up when someone she used to know - people she's sure she'll never see again, because let's face it, chances are good she's gonna croak in here - causes trouble. Christine isn't sure why they think she'll know anything given that they've had her locked up and out of the loop for a good three years now, but they'll take anything, and anything is a hell of a lot more than she's given them.

She's quite proud of that. Klingon torture is nothing to shake a stick at.

_It doesn't matter,_ she thinks, as the door swings open for the first time in several weeks. No one will ever know about any of this.

"Grilka!" she says, grinning wide. "Long time no see."

* * *

McCoy joins Sulu and Slater in the cockpit, where they've sat through an ordeal like this many times. Slater is has Klingon down perfect these days, and they have a stolen license to get them through, but that doesn't mean it's not still terrifying when they trick the enemy into letting them pass through these blockades.

"They're hailing us," says Sulu. "It's all you, Vicky."

She clears her throat, then answers the hail. "NuqneH," she says.

"Nob lIj pong."

She gives them their fake IDs, and relays their license information through the open channel. They are told to wait.

"My favorite part," drawls McCoy, gripping the armrests of his seat until his knuckles go white.

"It always takes this long," says Sulu, his voice even and calm. "Nothing to worry about."

Slater is ignoring both of them, eyes closed and concentrating. McCoy recognizes this look - she wears it every time they do this. He feels sorry for her. Victoria Slater is a scientist, someone who joined Starfleet to study unique plants and alien mineral samples, not to be a soldier. But she is one now. They all are.

Finally, after an eternity of five minutes, the gruff voice comes back over the channel.

"Qapla' batlh je."

Everyone relaxes. They're through. Slater lets out the breath she was holding. "Qa tlho'," she says. "Batlh bIHeghjaj."

"Oic da shikh jaj," says the Klingon. The line goes dead, and they're allowed to pass without incident.

McCoy rubs his forehead, wearily. "How long 'til we get to Athos IV?"

Sulu checks his console. "About thirty six hours," he says.

"I'm gonna go finish my nap, then," says McCoy, and he leaves them to each other, retreating to the numbness of sleep.

* * *

_She's on Risa. She's lounging by the pool, wearing a big hat and a swimsuit as skimpy as she dared that morning. She's reading a fascinating medical journal on holo-addiction when she sees him walking towards her, carrying two martinis, a small, sexy smile on his face, eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses and of course no shirt - this is her imagination, after all, except it feels so real, and she reaches out to take the glass as he hands it to her, but then -_

Christine's forehead connects with the stone floor of her cell and she comes back down to hell.

_That was a good one_, she thinks. She makes a mental note to revisit that one later, when she's alone and hurting.

"How does it taste, human?"

The blood Christine spits out stains the floor in front of her. "The same as always," she says wryly.

"Tell me. Where is Kirk? Where is he hiding?"

"No idea," says Christine. She relishes knowing that they still haven't found him. It lets her know that enduring all of this has been worth it after all. "He's probably dead, actually. Always was reckless, that Captain Kirk. He was in and out of Sick Bay daily... did I ever tell you about the time he came in covered in smelly green boils? Oh man, it's a great story, really - "

Grilka hits her again, and Christine gasps, seeing stars.

"Maybe another time, then," she groans.

"I am not interested in stories about boils," Grilka growls. "Tell me where he is. I know you know."

"I don't," she says. "He could be anywhere."

Christine braces herself, waiting for another blow, but it doesn't come. She looks up, and Grilka is contemplating her stonily.

"Our leader grows tired of keeping you here," she says. "He wants to make an example of you."

Christine swallows, trying not to react.

"You are no longer valuable to us," Grilka continues. "Unless you can tell us something, unless you can manage to recall a scrap of useful information about James Tiberius Kirk and his rebels, we will kill you." She gets down in Christine's face. "And I assure you: you will not die well. It will be painful. It will be humiliating. And it will be public."

"Pulling out all the stops, aren't you?" Christine answers, but her voice shakes.

Grilka senses her fear, and she smiles horribly. "The next time I come here, it will be to bring you to your death." She stands up and walks to the door. "Contemplate that, human, and see if it jogs your memory."

She throws Christine one last look of disgust, then the door slams behind her, only an echo left in her wake.

Christine waits until the footsteps fade away. _The end is nigh_, she thinks, and then she wraps her arms around her knees and cries, in fear and relief.


End file.
